Tag: Marketing

There are two parts to this article. The first part offers people in business a reminder of what can and must be done right now for your business. The second part offers my point of view on who is responsible for the less than exciting economic news headlines that seem to be part of our daily routine.

The Number One Action Step You Can Take To Grow Your Business In Difficult Economic Times and In Booming Economic Times.

Spend 50% of your time finding out how you can provide more value to your existing customers. As you find out then deliver that value. Spend 30 % of your time developing new customers. In summary, spend 80% of your time marketing. That’s it. If you are not growing your business, you are killing your business.

Who Is Responsible For The Negative Economic Events We Hear About Daily?

Do you remember there are rules and regulations already in place governing the banking system? Really doing a good job right?

Do you remember Sarbanes-Oxley? This was and is the law in response to the Enron fiasco and a number of other business situations awhile back. The idea was to prevent similar disasters from recurring. People seemed to forget there has been a professional internal controls standard already in place along with public company rules and regulations governed by the SEC. So with well founded governing policy already in place we enacted a law that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars and what is the result?

We have huge losses. The financial markets are in turmoil and so what is the conclusion? Our elected officials say we need more regulation. Where is it in the founding principles of our government does it say “we the people want the government to stick its nose everywhere we live and do business.”

Obviously I am a major advocate of very little federal government regulation and so a fair question is what are the alternatives?

I always look to what works for answers. In the history of our economy there are plenty of examples that provide guidance. When businesses provide value equal to or more than the price charged, people buy what is offered. When a business comes along and offers a competitive alternative that is superior to what is available people vote with their wallets. If what is offered by a business is not profitable for the business it ultimately fails. One example of this is the train wreck that occurred in the Internet Industry a number of years ago. Companies had a great story and were funded by private investors, but had no substantive product that was in demand by the market place or at least at a price the market was willing to pay. The economics of supply and demand worked perfectly. Companies failed and private investors got smarter. Where there was abuse, people went to Club Fed. Basic governance worked.

This portion of this article started with the question of who is responsible for the economic mess we seem to be in right now? Here is the answer……look in the mirror. We have allowed our governments to grow out of control and the ripple effect is an economic mess across this country that extends to international markets.

It is my belief I am totally responsible for everything that happens in my life. It took me a long time to understand that. Once I did, I can point to a noticeable improvement. Extending that to our economy and even beyond our borders, I know that when each person stops looking to others for a solution and delivers the message to people in public office that we have had enough with the regulations that don’t work, we as a country will grow stronger. We have the right to live our intentions in freedom and peace and we are sitting back and allowing others to weaken that right. It is time to say no more.

As a reminder the popular definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting the different results”. Most companies continue to do business the same way and blame the economy and high gas prices on their declining business results when they should be looking in the mirror. There seems to be a strong undercurrent of “I am waiting for somebody to do something vs. I am responsible.”

The operative word here is most. There are sectors of the economy that have been hit by current conditions. I will leave that analysis to economist and academics. They have a lot more expertise in such matters and enjoy the intellectual debates of cause and effect. I have a laser beam focus on what individual companies can and should be doing to achieve their potential.

I am excluding from this article any company who is in serious cash flow difficulty. When a business gets to that point, crisis management… turnaround expertise is needed. MY firm International Resources does that work and we are very good at it. I always advise if you are in that situation, call me or a firm like mine right now as time is of the essence. My direct line is 727-587-7871.

What are “The 5 Steps To Stop Insane Management From Driving Business Into The Ground?”

1. Have a very clear profit plan at each line item of business performance. Measure actual performance against plan and have clear accountability for achieving the plan line item by line item. To implement this you must have timely, accurate and relevant information. No excuses…must have.

2. When people who are accountable for line item performance consistently fail to meet the stated goals, replace them. Period!

3. The number one function in a business that will be the subject of most of the excuses is sales. These excuses come from people who do not understand how to market to a consumer who places ever increasing importance on relationships. Why do you think the community building sites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook are in the top ten most highly visited sites globally? According to Alexa, YouTube is 3 , MySpace is 6 and Facebook is 8 ) Every business must have a relationship driven marketing strategy and then implement it. See Relationship Marketing below.

4. Always be evaluating the market including on line competitors. I wonder if Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL in retrospect would have done anything different when Google first came to market? No company is immune from being seriously weekend by competition. I look at the drugstore landscape. I live in Florida where competition is very active particularly for pharmacy prescriptions. A new format of drugstores was introduced not that long ago by Walgreens, CVS, and others with positioning of buildings with 24 hour drive through pharmacies on high cost real estate. Two things have happened with those changes. Prices skyrocketed to pay for real estate and relationships with the pharmacy customer has almost become extinct. Within this landscape I am aware of several privately held drugstores doing very well because of their attention to customer relationships.

5. Don’t push a boulder up hill. Some companies were never meant to be. People start companies or buy existing companies because they think it is a good idea. The only opinion that matter is the market. If your business was not all that strong in the past and you are basically doing everything right, the best action to stopping the profit leaks may mean closing the doors. If you are not sure Contact Me.

Reality Business: The following examples are taken from just one day’s experiences – today.

1. I was talking with a former client who is now a good friend, who told me they have exposure on a large receivable as it looks like the customer is going out of business. After asking two questions I understood that procedures installed during the consulting project were ignored. Insane management. This happens all the time where people make exceptions to sound business practices and then wonder what went wrong. Follow well founded established policies and procedures without exception. Does that mean nothing will ever go wrong? No, but the surprises will be fewer and far between.

2. During a meeting with a very successful fund manager I asked him if there was any one or two things that he attributes to his success. We were specifically talking about clients who transfer portfolios of $250,000 and higher to him from other firms. He said: “just two things: first I have a “high touch” approach which cements the relationship. The markets have been unforgiving lately. I increase my meetings with clients when competitors are shying away from making calls to people whose portfolios have been hit. Second I have marketing funnel to my target audience that has consistently worked very well.” I am not writing the details as this is proprietary but I will tell you this – you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.

3. I was invited to lunch at a very nice restaurant in Tampa. It has a fairly steep price tag for most of the selections. There were many tables available. Like nearly every other restaurant I have ever dined, regardless of price point, when I left they have no idea who I am and have no way of inviting me back. Insane management.

All in one day!!

Relationship Marketing:

I love talking about how easy it is for retail business to install a relationship marketing program. This is actually easy for every company, but most readers can relate to experiences with restaurants, grocery stores, dry cleaners, specialty shops and other retail stores. Just ask yourself when was the last time you received a thank you note, an incentive to come in for a special on a particularly slow day or a brief questionnaire asking you how they can serve you better? It happens. I listened to a story the other night about a business getting a fax every time it rains near the lunch hour from a nearby restaurant saying “It is raining. Our business will be slow today. Come in for a free Taco.”” Of course, nearly everyone will be buying more than one taco. But isn’t that cool and how hard is that to do?

Visit http://www.localretailmarketing.com for an idea on how you can begin strengthening your customer relationships. The information is free. My firm is not if you want us to do it for you. We get it done now which can be very valuable for you.

Does 200 million page views a month catch your attention? How about knowing 41% of the members between the ages of 34 and 55 and all groups are divided nearly evenly between male and female? If that isn’t enough to get your attention consider these:

1. Members look for content by areas of interest.
2. All content is video and each video can be described using text that is rich with targeted keywords for your product or service.

Just a Couple More Things

1. The information above is about YouTube.. the 6th highest volume site on the Internet. The demographic data is for the US only and yet YouTube is International. The real number are larger but not quantified.
2. There are more than 150 social media sites on line and growing. Each one is attempting to carve out a niche of the huge general market. Of the 150, approximately one third are video sites. Once a person masters YouTube alll the skills are generally transferable to other niche market video sites.

The Action Plan Tracker

I have a business consulting firm. I teach companies how to build revenues and profits using proven principles and processes. Part of the business consulting work plan is to help the client implement an improved and more effective marketing strategy. Social media is now a required component of my updated business marketing strategy model. The numbers of people joining social media sites and becoming very active are very significant and should not be ignored.

There are a huge number of businesses that do not have websites, use blogs, test on line promotion campaigns, execute effective email campaign which are all very proven and effective marketing tools. Social media sites generally completely ignored by most companies. The exceptions are wisely building brand and loyalty.

Very recently I developed the groups YouTube Mastery on Facebook and MySpace as well as the the site www.youtubemastery.net These resources are just being developed and the website is very underdeveloped. However, I have a very clear plan and once I reach that point I take action and sacrifice some perfection. People need to know about these opportunities now and begin using all the Internet tools plus traditional marketing tools in their business now. I currently advise business owners that they need to be devoting nearly 80% of their time on marketing. Part of that 80% includes working with staff and others accountable for marketing. Marketing and developing people are the two most important areas where a business owner needs to spend their time. All other responsibilities should be delegated. What if your are an entrepreneur of one. The point is still the same.

Right Now Action Steps:

1. Join the group YouTube Mastery on Facebook
2. Visit and register at www.youtubemastery.net

These two actions will result in you getting up to speed on using social media and social media video to market your business.

This morning The Wall Street Journal asked if the recently announced iPhone to be released July 11 would be accepted by business. The answer influences the volume of iPhone sales and of course Apple’s earnings. This is my response which may give insight as to how business owners should consider many options that are presented:

“One path to answering this question is to consider the different functions within a business. For example, a typical accounts payable function currently is not enhanced by an iPhone. Account payable staff have the resources to do their job. Alternatively a technical field representative who is mobile could very well benefit from continually developing iPhone technology.

I appreciate this question as the use of cell phones and technology devices including the Blackberry and iPhones is a very topical question with business owners who I guide to making more money with their business.

In summary I am not an advocate of a universal policy allowing or prohibiting such devices. My advice is to decide at the functional level.”

Recently Entrepreneur.com Published An Article On Squeezing Out Profits In Tough Times actually titled “Less is More” This is an area where I have considerable experience and expertise. Today, I submitted my comments which followed the logic of my FREE Report offered at IR Consulting, Inc. and mentioned for the readers of Entrepreneur the availability of this report.

Last night I was reviewing the update to Traffic Jam which is John Reese’s site and it really is marvelous so I encourage you to look at my Blog Rush widget on the right side of this page and click through and sign up for an account for your blog. Then your blog entries feed Traffic Jam. A word of caution: if your blog is new I would wait until you have a reasonable volume of posts before applying for an account, as that is one of the criteria for acceptance. One of the values of Traffic Jam is for you to quickly see blog content published in your area of interest. When you do I recommend commenting on the blog posts and including your site links which is a great way to get back links to your site.

In summary, published content is one of the actions that add credibility to your business. I am more focused on publishing certain of my content in areas most likely visited by my target audience. The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur Magazine are examples of where I have published content recently.

With the increasing volumes of information being published primarily as a result of more blogs coming on line daily, it is in your best interest to identify where your target customer is most likely to be visiting. Then focus on attracting their attention with content that delivers value and demonstrates you know what you are talking about.

Sending all my readers the energy of vibrant health, happiness and prosperity.

Steve is the President of International Business Consulting Resources. His firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate. I am building my practice and welcome new client inquiries. Call me for a fee consultation at 727-587-7871 Remember many of my business building articles can be found at Steve Reports and my prosperity building tool is The Prosperity Tool Chest

This call is in connection with a product promotion. I am not an affiliate. I paid attention to this call because I know Frank Kern and Eben Pagan are both very successful people who both overcame a number of difficult life situations.

I particularly enjoyed listening to Eben described the techniques he used for moving to a mindset of prosperity. In that regard, I have developed a tool for myself to help me consistently stay in an prosperity mindset. I named it The Prosperity Tool Chest and it is free for you to use.

Here is a portion of the email I received from Eben”

“The Frank Kern Interview was SUPER fun. If you want
to listen to the replay, and learn more about how I
built the Guru MasterMind, and what you can expect as
a member, just click here:”

Steve is the President of International Business Consulting Resources. His firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate. I am building my practice and welcome new client inquiries. Call me for a fee consultation at 727-587-7871 Remember many of my business building articles can be found at Steve Reports and my prosperity building tool is The Prosperity Tool Chest

I instantly wanted to study the placement, the presentation and the copy. So the follow on question is did this presentation sell beds?

The company is not a client so there is no way for me to know for sure. My guess is that it is a very successful campaign even thought the copy is not very good and the graphics are just OK. So what makes me think the ad was very successful?

A two page foldout in a magazine published to appeal to wealthy people with the catch that $64,950 is for one bed is in itself intriguing. I am guessing those who have $100,000 in petty cash become very interested in this bed.

This article is not about a bed. The lesson is to appeal to your target audience. The company handcrafting this bed is not running the ad in ValPak. The placement is in a prestigious publication consistent with the quality and pricing of the product.

Valuable lesson. Pay close attention to ads and junk mail.

Sending all my readers the energy of vibrant health, happiness and prosperity.

This is a perfect example of professors teaching principle based on academic research vs. actual experience. I encourage you to read the entire post and my response. The following is what I published. ………………………

Hello and thank you for the post and data. Regarding the data on blogs I am wondering if it captures the blog hosted on a server supporting a domain name. For example http://www.stevereports.com is a WordPress blog platform hosted on space I lease. I set it up without going through the WordPress site. Seems to me this would distort you analysis.

The substantive issue of your article is on paid search. I just spent a year with an eCommerce business model where paid search continues to be an important part of the marketing strategy. Every campaign was carefully constructed and revenue vs. cost was continually monitored. To give you an idea of volume the company invests about $15,000 a month in paid search.

The results continue to exceed forecast. As long as there is profit after cost of the ad and cost of the product sold the ads will continue. As this is written the performance of paid search is very lucrative for the business.

Marketing strategy is a meaningful component of The Profit System I developed to help companies improve revenue and profits. I continue to recommend and assist clients with the implementation of paid click advertising.

In a blog post today Lynn writes (excerpts – click above for the complete post): “It doesn’t matter if it’s an experienced speaker making the transition from fee based & keynote speaking to public speaking or if it’s someone just starting out who wants to be a speaker, author or Internet Marketer, they all seem to be struggling with the same key issues.”…..

“One thing is that the new people just getting into this industry of information marketing are spending thousands of dollars learning how to build a list or how to blog & podcast or they’ve gone to speaker training, or learn how to do teleseminars or how to drive traffic and they still don’t know what their topic is.”

In all fairness most people who are passionate about business, marketing on line and off line and developing their own independent business are buyers. I am still a buyer and plan on attending even more events in the next 12 months. Each time I go to an event I buy products and consistently buy products that appear interesting. In many cases I want to see what someone else is doing. I may be able to adopt some of their content to what I am working on. I think I am doing a better job of knowing my topics.

There is deeper issue and this is my comment to Lynn’s blog post:

….Hi Lynn, hope you are doing great. Your post presents several very interesting topics for discussion. That by the way is an great way of generating interest and attention on a blog based site.

There is no question that focus on a topic matter is very important. I think it is important to realize that if your topic is one that others also focus on that is good. The market is telling you there is demand. I know I have side stepped topics in the past because of “this has already been addressed” only to see someone else recycle the topic in a new package.

My thinking today as I continue to move forward with my consulting practice where I show companies How To Increase Revenue and Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less with my process called “The Profit System” is that the dreams and desires of the individual must be met or anything that is successful will be short lived.

Using your example of a speaker who wants to take their keynote and develop it into an information product, if their motivation is the money it is likely going to be a mediocre product. There needs to be a passion about what we do that is in alignment of who we are. This is the reason I am now adopting my work with The Prosperity Now Program into my professional practice.